The Harry Potter Fanfiction Thread

Ponies piss me off. Not by their own fault, but because of their sheer prevalency.

Give me Humongous Mecha any day.

The fic I linked is only four chapters at present, though, and not particularly long.

edited 27th Sep '12 11:45:53 AM by EvaUnit01

Then I'll be sure to give it a look if I find myself bored with my current reading at any time.

I'd appreciate it if you did and left me some reviews.

Has anyone considered doing a Harry Potter fic in the style of Devil May Cry? Basically, have Harry as a knockoff of Dante or Nero with a different backstory (Dursleys killed by gang violence, Harry raised by Duke Nukem), who has an instinctive aversion to any form of manipulation - and the innate ability to detect it, as well as a complete lack of tolerance for "jackasses and morons", despite being something of a Idiot Hero Jerk with a Heart of Gold himself?

Suppose he evades Dumbledore's forces and isn't brought into Magical Britain until he's around fifteen. By which point he is as far from a Messianic Archetype as could be hoped while still being vaguely Heroic. Shoots Malfoy, gets in 'Mione's pants, punches out Cthulhu, gets Bellatrix to pull a Heel–Face Turn by being that damn good in the sack, and kills Voldemort through sheer mockery.

Check your disbelief at the door.

edited 28th Sep '12 10:23:48 AM by EvaUnit01

So basically every single "Independent!Harry" cliche in the one fic?

Pretty certain it's been done. Many, many times.

See, dude, the reason it works for Dante is that Dante is a massive dork. He just also happens to be handsome and really really good at killing people. Real badasses just do what comes naturally; everything you just described smacks of effort.

It was meant as a sort of Stealth Parody.

And I'm used to my ideas being rejected.

Then again, I actually don't read that much HP fanfiction, so other than Ron the Death Eater and Draco in Leather Pants, I'm not all that attuned to fandom / Fan Dumb cliches.

I'm guessing that a Full Metal Panic fusion is also going to be regarded as a poor idea?

edited 28th Sep '12 10:58:30 AM by EvaUnit01

It'd probably work better as a Parody, really, though you'd have to be prepared for a big chunk of the audience to just not get it and assume that it's all deadly serious. That sort of thing does have an audience though.

Which surprises me, given how interchangeably generic the protagonist always ends up in those fics - no matter if they are called Harry, Shinji or Lelouch, they always read to me as being the exact same Generic Badass Self Insert Gary Stu dropped in front of a Harry Potter or Evangelion or whatever backdrop. It's like the Nicholas Cage of fanfic.

I thought it would've been obvious as a parody by the time Harry started kicking skyscrapers into the air.

I think what bugs people is Harry getting an unrealistic leg up, having his personality overwritten or his spotlight taken (ironically, seeing as Harry himself would love to have all those things - dude has issues). You can still cross the universes, just not the streams.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with a Bad Ass no being effortless. In Shinji And Warhammer 40 K, shinji is always going through strenuous effort. In any good Frank Miller story, the Bad Ass gets the shit beaten out of him, and a great deal is made of the blood, sweat, toil and tears. The same goes for most Shounen Demographic works. Batman, either in Batman Year One, Batman Mask Of The Phantasm, or The Dark Knight Trilogy, goes through a lot of hurt and pain to achieve his power level, and every fight is far from easy (unless he's in predator mode).

I don't mind having Harry's personality rewritten as long as it's done in a funny way. If it's done in a serious way, I just can't take it because I can't get emotionally invested in a story where the main character has nothing to do with the character I like enough to make me read fanfiction to start with. But if it's meant to be funny, like say Harry Potter being raised by WWE Superstar The Rock, then I'm totally okay with it. It's like 30Hs except attempting to take itself seriously. It boggles my mind that it doesn't have a dramatic reading yet.

Idea I had last night that was inspired by reading the above-mentioned fic while listening to The Master:

During the trip to Diagon Alley in the first book, Harry gets separated from Hagrid and eventually bumps into an unusually-dressed witch with green hair who offers him a contract - she will give him the power to change his life and his world, in exchange for his agreement to grant one wish of her own in the future.

Innocent, naive Harry accepts the contract, and the next day finds himself with the power of the King, an eye that can compel others to do his bidding.

Note: Harry will not be a Lelouch clone, as many of his Geasses will be accidents as not, fortunate for him though they may be.

Look, if you're going to give him a Geass, give him something that's actually based on his personality and deepest yearning: geass grants you Your Heart's Desire. At that point, however, Canon!Harry has very little personality, so you should take the time to write a prologue and flesh him out a little.

My interpretation is that he's sick of seemingly everyone else having more control over his life than he does, and he wants to take back command of his own destiny.

However, the idea is kind of fluid - I actually didn't have a lot of plans where Geass itself would've affected much in the first year, but things would definitely be darker at the end and in the second year. On the other hand, I can make that AU backstory and use it as a catalyst for why Harry wants to be more in control of his life instead of being manipulated all the time.

Well, according to the Mirror, what he wants is a family, more than anything else in the world. So he should have a geass that's either a personalized version of the Resurrection Stone, or NAKAYOKUNARU! supercharisma.

Or the Geass that CC had, which is to be loved. And while that would come in handy for a shitty harem plot, that's not what I'm aiming for.

I don't think eleven-year-olds love each other that way. It'd probably be safe for the first three years.

In the original proposal, Harry was going to receive the Geass prior to year one, but he wouldn't really start using it until year three or year four.

Well, yeah, he wouldn't be equipped to. This is not Rational!Harry or teen genius Lelouch, he's not going to be all clever and systematic about testing and developing and using his power.

Well, also the situations involved. Other than Snape, the Dursleys, possibly Lockhart, and the Basilisk (hey - if God can be Geassed, then so can a measly reptile), there aren't a lot of people I could seriously see Harry Geassing in years one and two.

Come years three and four, however, I can see him Geassing the truth about his parents' betrayal out of Sirius or Peter, being more active in the Triwizard Tournament... and come year five, that's when everything would go completely Off the Rails, given my plan. However, that particular plan can't come into fruition without the Geass of Command that Lelouch has. The only other way I can think of to achieve it is with Charles' Geass that lets him rewrite memories, and it's nowhere near as surefire as Lelouch's Compelling Voice.

On the subject of not being a genius, there is that, but remember that he has Hermione for that, if he decides to let her in on it.

edited 1st Oct '12 12:04:22 PM by EvaUnit01

Hermione doesn't have the sort of mind that is suitable for using a freaking Geass. She's a goody-two-shoes, and she'd only make Harry refrain from using it for all those early years. Which I think might be a perfectly good excuse.

Nevertheless, if the early years are so uneventful and not-different-from canon, you might want to skip directly to the fifth year, and only do a couple of flashbacks for the details that went differently, if and when you need to.

edited 1st Oct '12 12:21:03 PM by TheHandle

I know Hermione doesn't have the sort of mind necessary to use a Geass. She does, however, have the mind necessary for the scientific method and experimentation. So that when shit hits the fan and someone gets Killed Off for Real - again - and it becomes evident that a little Mind Control is in order if the world's going to be saved, Hermione's not the kind of girl to let her pal Harry go about using his power without knowing as much about it as possible. That's what I'd meant to get at.

Year one: mostly same as canon for most of the year - with the possible exceptions of Snape being unintentionally Geassed into not being a jerkass anymore and the Dursleys (also unintentionally) being Geassed into treating Harry with equal affection to Dudley - up until the Wizard's Chess game at the end, wherein when Ron sacrifices himself so that Harry can win and move on, his sacrifice is a lot more... permanent.

Year two: Mostly the same, but in a last act of spite before vanishing, the Tom Riddle fragment in the diary kills Ginny. It's not anything against the Weasleys themselves, they're just in remarkably convenient circumstances to get killed off.

Killing Ron off in book one?

"How does ronnie Ron taste, master?"

"Like some kid with eyes"

Doing the former is tantamount to doing the latter.

I hadn't thought of that, but it is definitely NOT going to be played for comedy. Harry's best friend just got killed - what kind of bastard would make a joke out of that?

It's a rhetorical question, don't answer it.