The Harry Potter Fanfiction Thread

No, just the sporking. The fic itself is actually largely lifted word-for-word from the original books, except when the author changes something.

edited 20th Aug '12 5:05:26 PM by Pannic

So I've started writing my Marauders generation/First Wizarding War fic. At this point, what started as a Ministry-centric story has become one with an Ensemble Cast from the Ministry, the wizarding elite, and Hogwarts.

Now, I'm trying to write a Lily/James plotline, but I'm trying to write both characters as being flawed and human individuals and not "James is a raging jerkass who needs to clean his act up to prove himself worthy of the pure, perfect, unattainable Lily's affections." But Lily is portrayed in canon as so completely pure and without fault that it's hard to portray her in a rounded manner without accidentally invoking Ron the Death Eater on either character. But here's what I came up with:

For the first five years, James is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but he is a bully and gets called out on it. After the Snape's Worst Memory scene, he does end up cleaning up his act in his sixth year. This is when the picture-perfect Big Man on Campus Ace image starts to peel away. The war between the Ministry and Voldemort is getting more dire and the Minister of Magic, a good, strong, and just man, is facing a tough re-election with his campaign coffers dangerously low. That year, James' father and mother die, leaving him with a vast estate with vultures flying overhead. As he decides how to administer his inheritance, he starts to learn responsibility. He takes a closer look at the ways his family was engaging in philanthropy, in commerce, and in wizarding politics. His parents had kept themselves out of politics, but he starts doing his research and comes to more strongly identify with the Muggle-born rights movement (which, coincidentally, Lily strongly supports and editorializes in favor of in a Hogwarts school newspaper). When the Minister visits Hogwarts, James is so impressed by his commitment to fighting Voldemort and reforming wizarding society that he pledges to fund the Minister's campaign such that he'll never need another Galleon, Sickle, or Knut ever again (basically, the opposite reaction Harry later has to Scrimgeour), despite receiving marriage offers from prominent but pro-Death Eater families whose contributions could increase his own fortune many fold.

Many prominent pro-Dumbledore pureblooded families follow suit, and it's from James' advocacy of the Ministry, of Dumbledore, and of the Muggle-born cause that he later gets his extremely positive reputation in the wizarding world. But Lily still knows him as a schoolyard bully who only wants to impress her, and she thinks his new found political advocacy is insincere. She's wrong; he's sincere, and though their relationship is improving, they're still not friends. While she's no longer friends with Snape, she still blames James for pushing him to the point where he lashed out so terribly. To her, because of him, she no longer has a best friend. It also creates a psychological cushion to soften the blow of Severus's betrayal; "Potter's always been a jerkass — clearly, he led poor Sev astray, even if Sev is no longer my friend."

Over Christmas, James' favorite uncle Charlus, his aunt Dorea, and their three children are all murdered by Voldemort. With his family swept out from under him, James starts to change. He becomes more serious and his pranks become Lighter and Softer. He stops hexing people for fun, and actually starts showing off the intelligent, intellectual side which he hides under a veneer of jerkassery and foolishness. But then Snape and he have one last encounter and Snape baits him to the point where they start dueling again. James, his mind clouded by his grief, is getting overpowered by Snape, who is getting to finally vent six years of frustration at him and is tossing dark curse after dark curse at him. With no other options, and with an injured leg, James uses the first spell that comes to mind: "Sectumsempra"

Meanwhile, Lily has had the Muggle-born slurs thrown at her more often, stretching her to a breaking point as well. When she sees James and Snape fighting and then sees James, wounded and kneeling over a slashed Snape, a kneejerk reaction prompts her to explode at James, accusing him of trying to murder Snape, even as James is desperately trying to heal Snape, not realizing how potent a curse Sectumsempra actually is. James retorts that it was in self-defense, but Lily isn't having it. She accuses him of never having changed, of being an insincere liar who only supported the Minister's campaign or Muggle-Born rights in general because he knew those actions would win him points with her. She starts talking about how many good men and women died while he was still playing pranks, bullying Snape, and trying to get into her pants, and that the world was a poorer place with him in it and all of them gone. This is the breaking point. He and Lily heal Snape, bring him to the hospital wing, and part ways on bitter terms.

While in her dormitory, her rage subsided, Lily realizes that the incident really was a fight and that James was honestly trying to defend himself. He never, for example, tried to heal Snape after a fight before. He had changed, but she didn't really want to admit it. She hurries to James's dormitory...and finds him kissing another girl right as she was ready to apologize for everything. James gets to criticize her this time. She had taken his affections for granted. She assumed no matter what she said to him, no matter what criticisms, that he would always shrug it off and go back to hitting on her the next day. The problem is, she ended up having a Kick the Dog moment, and James begins to question whether going after Lily is the right call anyway. Lily, for her part, starts to miss James's flirtations, not realizing how much she missed them now that they no longer come. They, again, part on bittersweet terms. But this is only their sixth year, and they end up together in their seventh.

edited 25th Aug '12 9:22:19 PM by CrimsonZephyr

This fanfic, Ace Of Spades, is it any good?

Also, Pannic, could you spork Methods Of Rationality?

I would, but it's not every day Harry Potter acts like me at eleven (minus humanities-prodigy stuff and plus science-prodigy stuff), so I always give that fic's more facepalmy moments a pass for nostalgia's sake. I certainly don't think the narrative bends to his will often enough for him to be an outright Stu; I get the impression the narrator, inasmuch as there is one, spends twice as much time saying to himself -_- "Oh, god, shut up kid, for the sake of your unborn children, stop talking before you get shanked" as I do. It'd be nice if the story followed up on this more often, to be sure (it's one of the things that makes the likes of Tyrion Lannister and Miles Vorkosigan tolerable), but meh. It's not a massive deal to me.

Well, right now I'm rereading the whole thing, and Harry's mistakes (as well as those of everyone else) become much more apparent. I feel kind of sad about that, because the first time I read it I felt completely aligned with the character, and, boy, those were some extreme emotions and an awesome ride. I'm not entirely sure exchanging Emotional Torque for Fridge Brilliance was a good tradeoff...

Here is my first Harry Potter Lemon Fic:

The man in the middle of the crowd threw Harry a lemon. Harry caught it, reflexively, and was portkeyed into what looked like a cementery (As for the man who threw him a lemon, he had apparated away...). He didn't have the time to even look around, he was immediately stunned. The inert body was bled on the already prepared cauldron, and the bones and the flesh were added in turn. Voldemort rose from the whirling, boiling blackness, and beckoned to his servant, who gave hm a simple, straight razor. Wordlessly, Voldemort went to the rigid body, and slit its throat. Harry Potter was dead, at last. Time to summon the others: there was a war to be fought.

The End?

edited 3rd Sep '12 4:57:30 PM by TheHandle

Too long?

Length, no guarantee I'd find it annoying enough to mock, not enough spine to try to snark at one of the most popular fanfics ever written, not enough credibility in the Harry Potter fandom, unlikely that I'd have anything original to say about it, etc.

edited 4th Sep '12 8:34:13 PM by Pannic

How can you be so young, and yet have grown so wise?

Beats me.

Proposal that almost everyone else will probably reject: Mind Screwdriver prequel for Thirty Hs.

Crimson Zephyr: Your work looks and sounds like it'll be pretty good. Indeed, a lot of works with No Good Deed Goes Unpunished tend to be pretty good, but I'm not particularly fond of that theme - I like heroes eventually getting rewarded for their efforts, even if it's just a little bit.

It might be interesting. So, why did Harry eat Ron, why are they fighting demonic astronauts, how does one use a groinsaw, and why was Dobby sacrificed? How did Harry become the kind of person that would destroy Hogwarts for explicitly no reason at all? How did Dumbledore end up in a mummified tomb? What is a moon base that isn't on a moon? What sort of time skip allows for a dinner with the persident of Pangaea? A new Pangea isn't scheduled until after 250 million years. What kind of device allows for a book that is written with lasers, having the words being made of headless women making godless love to dragons made of motorcycles? How do the headless women breathe or eat? Why is their lovemaking godless? Why are the dragons made of motorcycles? Are they just gif-like animated holograms? How do they make words? Does every sexual position correspond to a symbol? Who would think of such a language, and why?

Actually, I was thinking more specifically about why Harry is an Omnicidal Eldritch Abomination who wields Fuckslayer, the answer to which would've been time loops. A shitton of time loops, over which Harry gradually became a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Knight Templar, and it eventually became less about saving his friends and more about not letting Voldemort win. Then he found a spell that summoned Fuckslayer, And Then Harry Was A God Of Testosterone, no longer needs a damn reason to do anything.

To answer your other questions, Ron was being his usual self - it's Harry who changed, and now finds him impossibly annoying - and may not even remember exactly who he is.

The "demonic astronauts" are actually either primitive Space Marines or "survivors" from the Event Horizon. Harry needs no reason to fight them.

The use of a groinsaw is actually quite simple, and consists entirely of fucking your enemy to death. The best part about the groinsaw is that if they don't have any convenient holes, you can make your own!

Rather than all continents merged into one, the Pangaea of the story is actually just a singular nation which, in a fit of ego, named itself Pangaea after the supercontinent.

The moon base is not on a moon because it is the moon.

The headless women are Dullahans like Celty Sturlusson, and, being creatures of the fey, have no need of food, drink, air, etc. Really now, that was the easiest one. Their lovemaking is godless because God doesn't sanction chicks without heads, and he also advocates a green environment - and the dragons made of motorcycles are, understandably, not very eco-friendly.

The dragons made of motorcycles are actually a type of golem, but the guy who made them lived in an urban environment where there was no clay, but an abundance of motorcycles. So he stole a shitton of motorcycles, and made golems out of them in the shape of dragons.

The pages of the book are pure light and aimed directly into the eyes of the reader, hence the use of the term "laser". This use of them indicates a technology that far surpasses anything we humans are currently capable of reproducing.

Rather than "letters" as we normally think of them (i.e., Roman alphabet, Cyrillic, etc.), the headless women making godless sex to motodragons is actually an alien form of sign language, which is beamed directly into the brain through the optic nerve via the pages made of lasers, explained in the preceeding paragraph.

Rather than various positions representing words or symbols, it is more likely that they convey ideas. For instance, the missionary might be "God is in his heaven and all is right in the world", while the reverse missionary could represent a record of crop harvests.

This language was conceived by a race of alien perverts who took Freud way too seriously in his belief, and expanded upon it by making an entire language based on sex. That the volume Harry reads involves headless women and dragons made of motorcycles is perhaps a particular dialect of the language - the Queen's English to the straight humanoid's American English, perhaps. Or maybe that particular book was just a porno. Can't dismiss that possibility.

Dobby was sacrificed because he's a goddamn annoying elf.

Anything else? XD

edited 27th Sep '12 8:59:22 AM by EvaUnit01

Why did the sandwich become made of cartilage? How can Harry kill everyone in the universe? How can they restart the universe? How is it that wearing women's underpants means you're a man of the Lord? What's the point of the glass with the thumb? Why does Rape Radbury follow his disclaimers about not believing what people said about him by actually saying horrible stuff about himself? Harry has a cousin? Why is the Grape Ape, I mean Rape Ape, even able to move at all? Why is the number of children rational but not integer? Why and how do they blob?

And why did everything you said before make perfect sense? Are you a genius?

The sandwhich is made of cartilage because, cabbage aside, it was the only vaguely edible material left on Surf Ninja Moon X without resorting to outright cannibalism. And everyone knows that cabbage is ick.

Harry can kill everyone in the universe and then restart creation because he wields Fuckslayer, an Impossibly Cool Weapon of Mass Destruction that makes him an Eldritch Abomination capable of doing whatever the fuck he wants so long as it's epic and described with Purple Prose. That was all but explained in-story.

Wearing women's underpants makes them men of the Lord because the Lord they're referring to is Happosai.

The glass with the thumb is decievingly simple, in that the old man wanted to try and gross Harry out. Clearly, he failed.

Rape Radbury is follows his disclaimers because he has an unnatural compulsion towards honesty about his faults, possibly stemming from some deep-seated guilt-inducing event of which we are not yet aware.

The Rape Ape is able to move because its innumerable phalluses are joined by muscles and tendons which, coincidentally, are also shaped like phalluses. It has every organ you would expect it to require in order to survive, they are merely phallus-shaped.

Harry's cousin is likely referencing one of his alternate selves from some other trollfic. That, or he's lying out of his ass.

The children are rational but not integer because they are either named after numbers or partially dismembered/mutated so that they are "more" or "less" than "1.0" of a complete child, and they blob because of the dificient/excess body parts rendering their movements extremely difficult to describe using conventional vocabulary.

I've been told my intelligence is "above average", but I don't think it qualifies for "genius".

And it made sense because I examined each question logically and applied explanations to it until I found one that seemed to fit.

edited 27th Sep '12 9:25:19 AM by EvaUnit01

Well, "genius" is subjective. But I'm rather happy about the work you've done. Some of your explanations sound too much like It Runs on Nonsensoleum a la Eiichiro Oda, but overall it seems like sthe story is starting to become coeherent. What about the Surf Ninjas? Where the heck do they come from? Why surf? Why ninja? And what is the relationship between the children and the Rape Ape? And how is it that there were cavemen on Mars?

edited 27th Sep '12 9:24:34 AM by TheHandle

It was not said that the cavemen on Mars were human cavemen. It's likely that there was a primitive form of humanoid life on the planet Mars which evolved in a similar way to our own, at least up until the introduction of vampires.

The Surf Ninjas in the story come from Surf Ninja Moon X, which is apparently the tenth moon that they have occupied (as opposed to Surf Ninja Moons I-IX). They surf because the ten moons they've occupied have extraordinary gravitational effects on each other's tides (surprisingly, many or all of them have some form of ocean), which produce spectacular waves. And where there are spectacular waves, there will be surfers to surf them.

As for why they're ninjas, the cheap answer would be Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja. However, I'm sure there's more to it than that. It seems likely that they were once regular ninjas in another planetary system who grew tired of the perpetual warfare and deception and sought a life of peace. Upon finding the aforementioned group of moons with spectacular waves, they found a new calling in life and devoted themselves to surfing. However, they never gave up the skills of deception and assassination that they used, and occasionally still had to market said skills in order to sustain their newfound collective hobby. Hence why they are surf ninjas.

The rape ape took in the children out of loneliness, being The Last of His Kind, and appears to be a compassionate father figure. Non-Indicative Name and all that.

What explanations are the most Oda-ish ones? I might be able to further explain them or come up with more sensible alternatives.

I think I've had enough for today. Maybe some other time. Your imagination is frightening.

Creepy Awesome, or High Octane Nightmare Fuel?

Because I am Neutral Good by nature.

More like Crazy Awesome.

Why, thank you. You're not the first person to tell me so, but the other guy said it after reading this.

"... but it was still reading".

??? I'm guessing that that's your opinion of it as well?

edited 27th Sep '12 11:38:22 AM by EvaUnit01

I have a lot of reading on my plate right now.

Ponies. Less Wrong. And rationalist ponies.