[Fandom] Now I need to go re-read canon...

[jennaria]

...because I'm fairly sure that Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince is not actually about Harry's sexual awakening, featuring Draco, the aforementioned Half-Blood Prince, and possibly Ginny Weasley. (I told Wife this. She made the most interesting faces in response.)

In any case. I have now looked through ~500 pages of Harry Potter fanfic on AO3, and come to the following additional conclusions:

- Top AU: rewriting all of canon from the ground up, usually but not invariably sorting Harry into Slytherin. Also tends to peter out somewhere around the Triwizard Tournament. Second Most Common AU: Everything Changes After The Fire Nation Attacks Sirius Dies.

- It's fascinating to follow certain tags down a rabbit hole. 19 pages of 'Pureblood Culture' (but only 6 pages of 'Wizarding Traditions')! (And two and a half of those 19 pages are from one particular author who specializes in the kind of romance where it's super-shocking to brush your hair in front of someone who isn't your family or your fiance, and kissing someone, well. Abstinence porn in the finest Victorian tradition.) 9 pages of 'Wrong Boy-Who-Lived' (which usually involve Harry being a twin, and you can figure it out from there)! And 11 pages of 'Creature Inheritance,' wherein it turns out Draco is a Veela, Harry is a Dragon, and Snape really is a vampire after all. (I kid. Sorta. Not as much as I might be.)

- Also, wow, canon is over here and fanon is over there and I see those of y'all who are trying to bridge the gap, y'all are doing God's work, but it's a really big gap.

- Finally, you know that thing where you're reading a lovely rich WIP, and you get to the end and want more? And go check the Last Updated stamp and it's all 'ha ha this was uploaded from a defunct archive and hasn't been updated in over a decade'? Yeah. :hollow laughter:

Comments

[jennaria]

I am always down for recs. I mean, I admit that my favorites tend to be stories where Adults Actually Goddamn Well Adult And Harry Doesn't Have To Do Everything (with a side of Everyone/Lots Of Therapy, because damn), or stories where the author runs around and world-builds like a champion to actually make the wizarding world something more than just 'Britain with wands instead of electricity.' On the other hand, I have also (voluntarily!) read multiple fics wherein Harry is a Lord of, like, sixteen titles, and also can turn into a Nundu on second Saturdays, so my taste is hardly infallible.

It really is two sub-series - tonally, plot-wise, world-building, so much shifts between GoF and OotP (and I know you're not remotely the only one who finds the attempted changes a dealbreaker). I haven't actually read 5, 6 and 7: I'm planning on doing so this fall, and probably yelling on here about it. :wry:

[swingandswirl]

/high fives in solidarity/

The last three fic I've started (and am still writing because apparently I am incapable of writing anything under 50K, especially with cowriters) have been some variations of 'Adults Find Out And Flip Their Shit, Sometimes With Genderbends' because honestly, stories about girls are much more interesting, at least for the kind of worldbuilding/politics I like. (fuck you, JKR, girly is not an insult or a bad thing to be.)

FWIW, we have very similar tastes! Those are basically the only two kinds of stories I read, but I have the additional filters of 'no Hermione/Weasley bashing' (oh, would that Ao3 have a filter for this) and 'Jesus Christ Muggles knowing about magic is a BAD THING read a history book' and 'oh my God stop conflating tradition with pureblood supremacy also the books are not this sexist FFS' which means I'm much happier in my own little AUs (which I should totally make a DW post about one of these days...)

Anyway, recs! These are all on fanfiction.net, but I promise they're still excellent despite being on the Pit of Voles. :D

Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past by S'Tarkan. This would honestly be my canon if I didn't love my various AUs so much. A thirty-year-old Harry, after defeating Voldemort but losing everyone he loves, goes back to fight the war better. It's a WIP and updates veeeeeery slowly, but what is there is amazing - Harry and everyone around him is written so well, his PTSD is dealt with realistically and beautifully, and it's a joy to see the characters grow into better versions of themselves - and the bumps in the road (because it would be really boring otherwise) are well-thought-out and handled very well.

Harry Crow What if the Dursleys decided to dump Harry on the goblins? This fulfils your 'excellent worldbuilding' criteria. I'd be happier if there were less sexism (I really don't think the WW is as sexist as fans think it is, not with two female founders and a female MfM in 1700-something), but overall it's an amazing fic with a really kick-ass Harry.

Lord of Caer Azkaban This takes a very cracky plot - what if Harry was Lord of Azkaban - takes it seriously, and actually does a very good job, SPAG errors aside.

I haven't actually read 5, 6 and 7
Smart of you! Honestly, I think JKR is at her best when writing the British School Story; it's when she goes outside of her wheelhouse in 5 onwards that things begin to go south rather spectacularly, especially since the woman has as much understanding of math and breeding populations as I do quantum physics. And that's not even getting into the fact that she can't, actually, worldbuild a culture for shit, since she's a nice White English lady and since when have they ever had a culture to speak of?

[hitokage]

Sorry to butt in but this -- And that's not even getting into the fact that she can't, actually, worldbuild a culture for shit, since she's a nice White English lady and since when have they ever had a culture to speak of? -- I may have to love you a little for this because YES YES YES. I've been feeling this SO MUCH for years, but everyone in my immediate circle seems to think she's a terrific world builder and I'm just like... but no?

[swingandswirl]

No worries! Fair warning, I actually have Theories about this and you've accidentally given me permission to spout them at you. Sorry in advance XD

everyone in my immediate circle seems to think she's a terrific world builder
Is your circle mostly American, by any chance? I ask because I've had American friends rhapsodise about how 'inventive' Hogwarts and the whole House system is, and I'm just sitting there dying laughing because Hogwarts is your bog standard British fancy boarding school with magic.

And I think the other major factor is that JKR is very good at funny names and clever little tricks of wordplay, which obscures the fact that the larger bones of her world-building - how the WW gets its food, how in the world they have a breeding population with one school, why we don't see any actual pureblood culture - just aren't there. It's like a building with absolutely gorgeous external details- stained glass windows, gold filigree on the roofs, the whole shebang- but then the damned support beams might as well be made of cardboard and candy floss.

[hitokage]

It is, though the school system itself is not usually cited as proof of her worldbuilding because apparently there's enough familiarity with Boarding School As Trope to know that? There are several non-Americans and also many Whovians, soooo. But it does feel like most of my (admittedly very small) circle is happy to point at the wallpaper and never notice the lack of sensible infrastructure. And with JKR now trying to expand her world outside the UK, that lack of serious thought to How Things Work, just... grinds my gears, so to speak. Like don't even get me started on how fundamentally broken the Fantastic Beasts movie is. Loved the story, but it's utter fantasy even beyond the use of magic.

[swingandswirl]

And with JKR now trying to expand her world outside the UK, that lack of serious thought to How Things Work, just... grinds my gears, so to speak.
If it helps, you're not the only one, and her lack of Serious Thought is pretty evident even within the British magical world itself. Like, why are English parents sending their kids to school in Scotland? Why is there only one school where Latinate magic is the only kind taught? (I mean, the answer there is imperialism, but I don't want it to be.) And that's not even getting in to how thoroughly borked the world-building is when you get out of the British isles.

I decided I was pretty much done with her when she declared there were only eleven schools of magic the world over, and one in Africa and none in India. The stupid, it burns us, precious.

[jennaria]

So far I've read Lord Of Caer Azkaban (loses points for 'well then we'll just share him! :-D :-D :-D', gains them for 'wait, if Harry's army is that bad-ass, then it makes no sense for a big dramatic battle confrontation between Harry and Voldemort! ...cool, commandos it is.'), and Harry Crow (fun! although you're right, loses points for sexism, also for only remembering that gay people exist half-way through the story, but gains them for world-building and well-handled villainy, especially in the second half).

(I will admit to rolling my eyes, just a little, at S'Tarkan's saying that to him, slash is automatically OOC.)

It's easy to 'world-build' when all you're doing is grafting something on to your own culture - and by 'own culture' I include race, country (and maybe region and city too) where you grew up, and social class. It gets more complicated as soon as you step beyond that.

[swingandswirl]

I will admit to forgiving Caer Azkaban's 'well then we'll just share him' because I really really hate love triangles, so that was a refreshing change (and rather eye-opening to a sheltered wee!Tam.) And I'd missed that comment of S'Tarkan's completely! Rolling my eyes forever.

I will say, though, that I am a little more forgiving of fics as old as these are (looking at the publishing dates, they're both over a decade old, while Harry Crow is still no spring chicken with a publishing date of 2012) because I remember what the environment, especially on FF.net, was like back then. No outright homophobia/ 'eww slash gross' was, IIRC, pretty progressive.

It's easy to 'world-build' when all you're doing is grafting something on to your own culture - and by 'own culture' I include race, country (and maybe region and city too) where you grew up, and social class.
BINGO. And JKR is really good at amusing little twists on the familiar. She just fails epically at stepping out of her Nice White British Lady wheelhouse, and doesn't seem to be willing to do any research to fix that. Which is especially infuriating because she of all the authors in the world has the resources.